The head of a high-profile San Francisco charity has been forced out, following a Chronicle investigation that found the nonprofit had long deceived donors by funding the director’s posh lifestyle while spending relatively little on people with developmental disabilities it purported to serve.

Socialite and fashion maven Joy Venturini Bianchi, 78, in the past has maintained she has served at Helpers Community Inc. with self-sacrifice and the best of intentions. Asked for comment on her ouster, she said by text message: “My heart has always been with those who are developmentally disabled - and my heart will always be with those who are developmentally disabled.”

Board President Peggy Bachecki would not elaborate on the departure, other than sending an email Wednesday stating that “Joy is no longer an employee of Helpers,” and that an interim director had been hired Tuesday.

Charity under scrutiny

Bianchi’s departure follows another significant development at the nonprofit, which was known until recently as Helpers of the Mentally Retarded: its largest-ever disbursement of funds — $1 million worth of grants to several Bay Area nonprofits serving the elderly and disabled. For more than a dozen years, Helpers gave little to nothing to the charitable causes the organization defined as its top priority, The Chronicle’s investigation showed.

The money distributed last month is roughly six times what the group reported giving in 2015, the last year of federal filings available, and reveals a dramatic return to the group’s historic aims.

Indeed, in an interview last week, Bachecki described Helpers as planning to “rise from the ashes,” and said the group’s board of directors “is moving in a completely different direction.”

Among other changes, Bachecki said Wednesday Helpers is no longer selling high-fashion items to raise money. Going forward, she said, it will continue to operate its Ghirardelli Square retail store, but will liquidate the inventory of designer clothing and accessories in the boutiques it has operated for many years.

“We’re going to get Helpers moving forward, and it’s not going to resemble what it has been in the last few years,” she said. “My intention is new blood, new ideas, new people.”

Helpers, founded in 1963, originally housed adults with developmental disabilities in a collection of homes on Fulton Street along Golden Gate Park. In 2002, under Bianchi’s leadership, the charity transitioned from housing the disabled to selling donated high-end fashion items to support other groups providing residential care, amassing $6 million in assets in the process.

Since the Helpers homes for the disabled were closed, however, The Chronicle found that Bianchi’s annual compensation package of roughly $200,000 was higher every year than the group’s total giving. Bianchi’s annual pay also far exceeded that of CEOs at similarly sized San Francisco human services nonprofits.

The Helpers board would not provide details about Bianchi’s exit after decades at the organization’s helm. But internal accounting records shared with The Chronicle show Bianchi spent hundreds of thousands of dollars shopping for luxury clothing and accessories to resell at Helpers’ boutiques, maintaining her Jaguar and on a pricey “public relations” campaign that included traveling to out-of-state galas, buying symphony, orchestra and ballet tickets and dining at the upscale Gary Danko restaurant 17 times.

While the group built its reputation as a resale operation for donated clothing, Bianchi spent years purchasing apparel and accessories — new and used — at a rapid clip. Her shopping sprees to stock the racks at Helpers House of Couture and a boutique at Ghirardelli Square included visits to Jeremy’s, the now-defunct San Francisco discount luxury store, the tony Margoth resale shop in Manhattan, and Full Line Collection Inc., a jewelry wholesaler in New York.

From March 2001 through October 2016, according to internal financial records, Bianchi spent $265,000 at one store alone — Goodbyes, an upscale resale shop in Presidio Heights.

Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle

Joy Bianchi helps Allison Thompson try on a hat at Helpers House of Couture in San Francisco, Calif., on Sunday, January 17, 2016.

Joy Bianchi helps Allison Thompson try on a hat at Helpers House of...

Revelations of the freewheeling spending spurred immediate action after the newspaper’s investigation was published in December. Within days of the report, the Helpers board of directors reduced Bianchi’s salary and removed her from the board, where she had served in what critics described as a conflicted role as the charity’s paid top executive and one of the nonprofit’s overseers. But she remained as director until this month.

In March, Helpers received a rare rebuke when the organization was ordered by the San Francisco Office of the Assessor-Recorder to pay $31,000 in back taxes after misleading city officials about the use of its Fulton Street properties.

Bachecki has denied misleading the assessor’s office, maintaining that the group properly reported the change from residential homes to the assessor and made the properties available for inspection.

Still, Helpers paid the taxes May 17, according to the San Francisco Office of the Treasurer and Tax Collector, after spending $13,000 for 20 hours of attorney’s fees during a one-month period to respond to the newspaper’s inquiries and the property tax issues raised by local officials.

Responding to Helpers’ relatively paltry giving during the last decade, Bianchi said in an interview last year that the nonprofit had struggled to find suitable recipients.

But in the last six months, Bachecki said she has made repeated visits to local nonprofits serving developmentally disabled adults that have reminded her of “who we are working for.” As a result, in mid-July, Helpers awarded four $250,000 grants to the Arc San Francisco, the Pomeroy Recreation & Rehabilitation Center in San Francisco, Cornerstone Community Homes in San Rafael, and Cedars of Marin in Ross.

Bachecki’s Wednesday email praised Bianchi’s lifelong dedication to Helpers and the organization it grew from for enabling the group’s bright future: “If not for the work that Joy did over the last 60 years, we would not have the assets available to even begin exploring programs, services and partnerships that we may undertake to help fulfill some of the needs of those who are developmentally disabled in our community,” she wrote.

Officials with the nonprofits receiving Helpers’ donations said they plan to use the money to expand high-quality food programs, career preparation and educational training, and to refurbish aging facilities and residential homes.

The Pomeroy Recreation & Rehabilitation Center, which serves 500 children and adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities each day, will create a new drop-in day for seniors who have become disabled later in life with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia.

Meanwhile, the Cedars of Marin, which serves 165 adults with developmental disabilities in day programs and 10 group homes, will expand a small galley kitchen that provides 110 residents with meals from organic gardens on its 24-acre ranch.

Chuck Greene, executive director at the Cedars, said, “It’ll make a huge difference. It’s not easy money to get.”

Former Helpers employees cheered the new grant-making and what they described as Bianchi’s long-overdue dismissal. Helpers employees have had mounting concerns about poor oversight and the way the organization had been run by Bianchi, accusing her of personally benefiting from her position in possible violation of nonprofit rules.

Three of her former administrative assistants during the past five years — Betsy De La Garza, Bryan Blumenfeld and Roberto Rosas Mariscal — described an emotionally difficult work environment, where they were routinely asked to perform personal tasks for Bianchi they found inappropriate and outside their scope of duties.

Those tasks included housekeeping, cooking and yard work at Bianchi’s private residence on Third Avenue as well as doing her laundry, carrying the trash from her home to garbage bins at Helpers, and cleaning her car, they said.

Joining the critiques of Bianchi’s succession of former assistants, Helpers’ bookkeeper Marie Callahan Brown said she planned to quit this month because she no longer felt comfortable being responsible for processing the organization’s accounting.

“It has been a long time coming,” Brown said of Bianchi’s departure. “Finally, finally somebody got it. Hopefully now they will be able to do a lot of good and help a lot of people.”